Cloudflare's Pay Per Crawl campaign from an SEO-led PR perspective

We've reached an inflection point in how people find and trust information.

AI-powered search, instant answers, and LLM assistants are reshaping discovery at a pace that forces companies to rethink long-standing business models.

Cloudflare's Pay Per Crawl initiativeprovides a timely case study of how a tech brand can respond to this shift – using product strategy to compete for traffic and shape the very terms of the market conversation.

This mini-study examines how Cloudflare positioned itself ahead of the curve, balancing a disruptive product launch with a purpose-driven narrative.

From an SEO-led PR perspective, the analysis focuses on one central choice: instead of chasing existing queries, Cloudflare created its own.

That approach generated results far beyond visibility, influencing press coverage, investor sentiment, and branded search demand.

Note: This analysis does not evaluate the potential impact of Pay Per Crawl on Cloudflare’s clients’ traffic or AI visibility. It focuses solely on the campaign’s effect on Cloudflare’s brand equity up to July 18.

The facts

To get familiar with the context, in case you missed what Cloudflare announced during the last few months, please read the following key milestones, sorted by date:

• September 23, 2024:CloudflareannouncesA public preview of AI Audit – this is the first time the company says it will let publishers "set a fair price for crawls."
• September 23, 2024:Formal announcementReinforcing the monetization angle and opening the wait-list.
• September 23, 2024:Technical release notefor the AI Audit launch.
• December 10, 2024:Robotcop update– adds robots.txt enforcement to AI Audit, tightening control ahead of pricing.
• July 1, 2025:Pay Per CrawlOfficial private-beta launch– explains 402 flow, pricing headers, and Cloudflare as Merchant of Record.
• July 1, 2025:Cloudflarereleasesthe "Content Independence Day" positioning piece: default flips to block unless paid.
• July 1, 2025: Detailed how-to and header specification(crawler-max-price, crawler-exact-price, etc.)
• July 1, 2025: Release notefor the Pay Per Crawl feature switch-on.
• July 1, 2025:Cloudflareclaimsto be the first infrastructure provider to "block AI crawlers without payment."

I've put together a table showing Cloudflare's stock prices alongside its quarterly earnings and key product updates to help uncover any correlations:

Dig deeper:Why PR is becoming more essential for AI search visibility

The impact

To quantify the campaign's impact to date, the analysis focuses on four key findings across a spectrum of performance indicators:

• Digital PR effectiveness.
• Financial market reaction (stock price)
• Audience interest (branded search volume)
• Digital positioning (search and AI visibility)

Key finding 1: 1,300+ press articles, 2,177 new backlinks, and 897 referring domains

Between September 2024 and July 18, 2025, Cloudflare earned an estimated ~1,380 press mentions, based on a conservative 65% coverage ratio.

These mentions appeared across top-tier outlets, including:

• The New York Times.
• BBC.
• TechCrunch
• Business Insider

Coverage also extended to:

• Leading .edu domains.
• Top SEO/PPC publications such as Search Engine Land.
• Community-driven platforms like Reddit and Hacker News.

During the same period, Ahrefs data confirms 2,177 new backlinks from 897 unique referring domains, 84% of which are standard, underscoring the campaign's authority and link equity.

Basis for the 65% coverage estimate

Campaigns that secure 897 linking domains typically drive an additional 0.5 unlinkedbrand mentionsper referring domain - meaning around 450 unlinked mentions in this case - bringing Cloudflare's total media footprint to approximately 1,830 touchpoints.

This represents a major win for both brand visibility and SEO authority.

While the exact number of press articles may differ, this study uses a conservative 65% coverage estimate.

Backlinks and referring domains per URL

The table below shows the total backlinks and referring domains Cloudflare had earned per URL as of July 18, 2025, to assess the effectiveness of each content asset in driving link acquisition.

What's especially interesting is how different asset types drove the acquisition of referring domains:

Beyond backlinks and referring domains, earned press also drives social shares and referral traffic.

The SharedCount Bulk tool was used to get the full picture for Cloudflare.

While it only tracks Facebook and Pinterest, the data still provides valuable insight into which content types resonated most with readers, further expanding Cloudflare's footprint across the web.

(Note: Tools such as BuzzSumo can capture shares across additional networks. This broader scope falls outside the limits of this mini-study.

Table with the Total Pinterest and Facebook Share Counts of Cloudflare's initiative:

Key takeaways

• Blog posts drove the lion's share of backlinks
  • Over 80% of the total backlinks (1,748 out of 2,177) and the vast majority of referring domains (704 out of 897, ~79%) came from Cloudflare's blog posts.
  • The July 1 "Pay Per Crawl" announcement generated 924 backlinks from 338 domains.
  • This underscores the power of narrative-driven, customer-facing content to earn natural links.
• Blog posts were the clear winners for social engagement as well
  • The July 1 "Introducing Pay-per-Crawl" post alone generated 752 Facebook shares, dwarfing every other asset.
  • Together with the "Content Independence Day" post (197 shares), narrative-driven blog content proved far more "share-worthy" than press releases or technical documents.
• Press releases act as strategic amplifiers, not direct links or share magnets
  • While the releases themselves attracted fewer direct backlinks and social shares, they seeded authoritative coverage.
  • Journalists picked up the story from the official release and linked back to the richer blog post for deeper context.
  • Additionally, the low share counts confirmed their role as distribution "sparks" rather than engagement drivers.
• Timing and distribution are as important as messaging
  • Coordinating the press release with the blog post launch ensured simultaneous visibility.
  • This "one-two punch" made it easier for outlets to cover the story in a single piece, linking to the blog and consolidating attention.
• Technical assets lag behind - opportunity for repackaging
  • Developer docs and changelogs accounted for only eight backlinks, eight referring domains, and a few social media shares.
  • Their high "referrer-to-backlink" ratio (1:1) suggests strong relevance to a small, dedicated audience, which highlights the additional exposure Cloudflare achieved even from its technical assets.

Key finding 2: The company's stock rallied from $85.61 (September 2024) to $197.35 (July 2025) - a 131% increase

Another compelling aspect of Cloudflare's Pay Per Crawl campaign was its contribution to this surge in share price.

This section examines how a brand's marketing and digital PR initiatives can drive tangible financial impact, reflected in stock gains, even before a product's official launch.

While this study does not claim stock market expertise, LLM-assisted research into major financial institutions and analyst commentary helps explain the rally.

Analysts attributed the growth primarily to three factors:

• The stock's rally was driven by a strategic transformation from a content delivery network (CDN) into a comprehensive "connectivity cloud" platform.
• The market recognized Cloudflare as a foundational part of both the enterprise IT stack and the growing AI economy.
• This narrative was supported by consistent quarterly earnings beats and the visionary launch of the AI Crawler Payments system. You can access the full AI reporthere.

Key takeaways

• Narrative shaped perceived value before launch
  • By framing Pay Per Crawl as a "fair-price" solution for AI crawlers through coordinated blog posts and press releases, Cloudflare had driven investor confidence (and an increase in share price) well ahead of any billing.
• Wait-list and media pickup validated market interest
  • The simultaneous July 1 content rollout generated both a substantial publisher wait-list and widespread media coverage.
  • This confirms that the offering resonated with both prospective customers and industry press.
• SEO and social metrics served as early 'revenue' proxies
  • Nearly a thousand referring domains and hundreds of thousands of social shares around the launch content translated engagement into tangible link equity and brand lift – signals that would later convert into paying customers.
• Private-beta launch drove a sharp one-day spike
  • When the Pay Per Crawl private beta went live on July 1, 2025, shares rose from $171.97 (following the June 13 convertible note announcement) to $184.95 that same day – a 7.5% increase.
  • This demonstrates a direct link between high-profile product news and immediate stock movement.
  • By July 18, the price further rose to $197.35.

Dig deeper:In GEO, brand mentions do what links alone can't

Key finding 3: Branded searches for Cloudflare increased by +18.7% in 2025 YoY

This section tracks Cloudflare's branded search volume from September 2024 through mid-2025 – and placed those figures in the context of the broader upward trend since 2022.

Branded queries reached an all-time high in June 2025 with 5,235,660 searches, up from 3,447,820 in June 2024.

The average search volume in Q1-Q2 2025 was 18.7% higher than the same period in 2024.

This analysis helps illustrate how increased brand visibility - fueled by the Pay Per Crawl campaign and related PR efforts - correlates with growing market interest over time.

Dimensions and KPIs excluded from this analysis:

• Business impact data:We don't have access to precise adoption or revenue figures, so we'll need to wait for Cloudflare's Q3 2025 financial report before drawing any firm conclusions.
• Traffic estimates:Traffic estimator data (e.g., Semrush, Ahrefs, Similarweb) was excluded, as these tools often diverge from actual analytics. This ensures the integrity of the study.

Key takeaways

• Branded-search spikes aligned with specific feature updates
  • The year-over-year increase in December 2024 jumped to 44.6%, coinciding with the robots.txt enforcement update on Dec. 10 (Robotcop).
  • June 2025 saw the highest YoY gain (~50%) immediately before the Pay Per Crawl private-beta launch.
  • These patterns suggest increased interest around these key milestones, though without asserting direct causation.
• Elevated search levels persisted beyond individual peaks
  • Search volumes remained higher throughout Q1-Q2 2025 compared to the same period in 2024.
  • This indicates a sustained increase in interest that may reflect cumulative campaign effects rather than isolated single events.
• Record highs suggest a potential campaign contribution
  • While it's impossible to accurately quantify how much of the June 2025 all-time high (5.2 million searches) resulted from Pay Per Crawl activities, the timing and relative magnitude support interpreting these figures as indicative of the campaign's possible impact rather than definitive proof.
• Increased branded search builds long-term authority
  • This sustained growth in branded queries is more than a vanity metric. It acts as a powerful brand signal to search engines.
  • When users actively seek out a brand, it demonstrates a level of trust and authority that serves as a foundational ranking element, a fact underscored by thesignificant Google search documentation leakin 2024.
  • This enhanced authority not only increases visibility in traditional search but also likely strengthens Cloudflare's prominence in AI-driven answers, which prioritize trusted and recognized sources.

Key finding 4: Search engines and LLMs already favor Cloudflare on core campaign terms

This part briefly examines Cloudflare's organic and AI visibility for its signature terms.

Rather than targeting an established, high-volume segment, Cloudflare created proprietary queries - "robotcop" and "Content Independence Day" - and consistently reinforced them across all assets.

As the screenshots below show, the brand now holds the top spot in Google U.S. for "pay per crawl" and even appears in AI overview snippets and ChatGPT responses.

This signals that both search engines and LLMs treat Cloudflare as the definitive authority on these terms.

Notably, Cloudflare achieved this without any prior market validation, favoring a branding-focused approach over a purely data-driven strategy.

Note:This study does not include an in-depth SEO analysis of each individual asset in this section. It focuses on how Cloudflare's unconventional approach challenges traditional data-driven SEO strategies. A deeper asset-level review would surely reveal additional insights, lessons, and/or potential missteps.

The monthly search volumes for the terms Cloudflare introduced during its campaign were near zero, according to Google Keyword Planner or Semrush:

Yet Cloudflare's pages now rank in Position 1 in Google U.S. for "Content Independence Day" and "pay per crawl" (as confirmed by Semrush) and even appear in AI Overviews.

ChatGPT also cites the company's initiative when explaining the concept, highlighting the campaign's early impact across both traditional and AI-driven discovery channels.

Key takeaways

• Strategic term coinage bridged branding and search
  • By inventing and promoting unique terms like "robotcop" and "Content Independence Day," Cloudflare didn't just run a PR campaign – it created its own niche search queries.
  • That bold move ensured every content asset was optimized around proprietary vocabulary, delivering seamless alignment between branding, SEO rankings, and AI model citations.
• Coordinated roll-out amplified cross-channel impact
  • Cloudflare synchronized blog posts, press releases, and developer documents on the same signature terms.
  • This consistency sent clear signals to search engines and provided uniform phrasing for LLMs to learn from high-authority sources – maximizing visibility across both traditional and emerging channels.
• Emerging-market positioning solidified thought leadership
  • Rather than chasing established keywords, Cloudflare targeted an emerging market need - paid AI crawling - and staked its claim early.
  • This "first mover" stance secured top organic positions and positioned the brand as the go-to authority in AI contexts, influencing how LLMs surface and validate domain expertise.
  • A purely demand-led approach would have limited Cloudflare to chasing competitors' search trends.
  • By daring to coin and own new terminology, it secured top rankings and shaped the emerging AI-crawl discourse, reinforcing its leadership rather than simply following the crowd.

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Shaping Digital PR: Lessons from Cloudflare

Purpose-driven marketing never stops delivering

By anchoring Pay Per Crawl in a clear purpose – fair pricing for AI crawlers – Cloudflare showed that campaigns rooted in genuine brand values resonate more deeply than purely tactical SEO plays.

This purpose-driven approach ensured visibility across any channel, building trust and momentum even before any revenue was generated.

Drawing onThe concept of Simon Sinek "Start With Why", Cloudflare's "Content Independence Day" exemplified leading with purpose rather than product features.

It articulatedwhythe initiative mattered (protecting publisher rights) before detailinghowIt worked.

This differentiated the campaign and reinforced the brand's authority in both search results and AI-driven responses.

Do not hesitate to develop and seed new branded search terms to capture exclusive search real estate

Cloudflare dared to introduce new branded search terms for this initiative.

This reinforces what Rand Fiskin and Tim Soulohighlighteda few months ago.

In an AI-dominated world, marketers must stop chasing generic, high-volume queries and instead create proprietary, low-volume terms that embody their unique story.

By doing so, you create demand around your brand's narrative rather than simply serving existing search intent.

The shift from traditional digital PR SEO to SEO-led PR is no longer optional

Classic digital PR SEO focused on brands broadcasting their own news.

However, in the era of generative AI, PR must operate in two directions. Initiatives should:

• Be triggered by real-time search and market intelligence.
• Amplify the brand's visibility across search engines and AI surfaces.

Rather than simply issuing press releases, modern teams:

• Track trending queries.
• Respond with data-rich reports and surveys.
• Insert timely insight into live conversations.

They replace the one-way, brand-centric model with a dynamic, insight-driven dialogue.

At my agency, we call this approach "SEO PR."

By grounding every outreach wave (pre-launch, launch, and post-launch) in up-to-the-minute keyword, market, and trend data, brands can maximize their footprint across both search engines and language models.

Traditional PR fundamentals – strong relationships, compelling storytelling, and newsworthy angles – remain essential.

They now work hand-in-hand with this data-driven framework to deliver maximum impact.

Run multiple digital PR waves (pre-launch, launch, post-launch)

Staggered outreach unlocks repeated chances for:

• Earned press.
• Brand mentions.
• Backlinks

These are critical assets for visibility in today's LLM-driven landscape.

More PR waves mean more visibility.

Dig deeper:7 ways to grow brand mentions, a key metric for AI Overviews visibility

Embedding clear 'read more' CTAs in press releases is vital

Including prominent calls-to-action in the release directing readers to the blog post boosted click-throughs.

Journalists appreciate a ready link to deeper details, and readers gain greater value.

Measure well beyond backlinks, rankings, or traffic alone

Success isn't just the volume of links on the release itself, but also the downstream pickup.

Track referral traffic, social shares, and subsequent mentions of the blog post to capture the full impact of your PR distribution.

Last but not least, remember to optimize every asset of yours

Cloudflare:

• Tightened internal linking and on-page SEO to channel the authority earned during the campaign.
• Probably applied the same discipline to partner and press-hosted content.

This ensures the brand captures maximum visibility across search engines and AI platforms.

Do not skip doing the same for your own campaigns.

Turn Cloudflare's Pay Per Crawl campaign into an SEO PR playbook for the AI era

Cloudflare's Pay Per Crawl campaign is a masterclass in forward-thinking digital PR.

It shows how brands can lead emerging markets by creating new narratives instead of chasing established search arenas.

The campaign highlights the impact of combining purpose-driven storytelling with data-informed, multi-wave PR to build lasting authority across both traditional and AI-powered ecosystems.

For marketers in the AI era, Cloudflare's approach is a clear call to:

• Innovate boldly.
• Proprietary search terms of the coin
• Run insight-driven outreach that drives visibility while shaping the future of brand equity and leadership.

Dig deeper:Reactive PR & AI: How to Leverage Trending Topics Faster